Maxim Integrated Patent Grants

Systems and methods to safely discharge inductors without energy limitations

Granted: June 13, 2023
Patent Number: 11676752
Embodiments of a discharge circuit are disclosed for quickly and safely discharging energy from an inductor load. The discharge circuit comprises a first switch, a second switch and a voltage regulator. The inductor load couples between the first switch and the second switch. During fast demagnetization, a high side switch is tuned off to decouple the load from a voltage source and the second switch is turned on. Voltage on one end of the load is pushed high and maintained at a…

Battery cell analyzer

Granted: June 13, 2023
Patent Number: 11675015
An integrated circuit device includes a controller, a voltage source coupled to the controller, a voltage sampler coupled to the controller, a to current detector coupled to the controller and memory coupled to the controller, where memory includes code segments executable by the controller for: (a) measuring a cell voltage to determine an initial voltage; (b) holding the cell voltage at the initial voltage using a power source; and (c) determining the leakage current of the cell by the…

Systems and methods for gate driver with field-adjustable UVLO

Granted: June 6, 2023
Patent Number: 11671095
Systems and methods for gate driver with field-adjustable undervoltage lockout (UVLO) are disclosed. A gate driver system comprises a control circuit and a driver circuit. The driver circuit incorporates a field-adjustable UVLO, a control logic, and an inverter. The level of the field-adjustable UVLO is adjustable by an external circuit, which can be a resistor based voltage divider. By setting the UVLO level externally adjustable and by moving a reference ground to the external voltage…

Control circuit for improving infrared (IR) emitter storage capacitor utilization

Granted: May 30, 2023
Patent Number: 11665800
Described herein are systems and methods for operating DC-DC regulators such as LED drivers. Various embodiments herein allow a DC-DC regulator to switch between buck mode and buck-boost mode without suffering effects otherwise resulting from transient currents when switching between modes. In certain embodiments, this is accomplished by operating the DC-DC regulator in a buck-boost mode to charge a boost capacitor with a substantially constant inductor current. The inductor current is…

Chromatic dispersion equalizer adaption systems and methods

Granted: April 4, 2023
Patent Number: 11621782
Described herein are systems and methods that perform coarse chromatic dispersion (CD) compensation by applying precomputed coarse front-end equalizer (FEE) tap weights to a receiver based on an assumed propagation distance. After a waiting period, the FEE tap weights are applied, and it is determined whether the FEE tap weights cause a decision-directed tracking of channel rotations to satisfy a stability metric. In response to the stability metric not being satisfied, the assumed…

Chromatic dispersion equalizer adaption systems and methods

Granted: April 4, 2023
Patent Number: 11621782
Described herein are systems and methods that perform coarse chromatic dispersion (CD) compensation by applying precomputed coarse front-end equalizer (FEE) tap weights to a receiver based on an assumed propagation distance. After a waiting period, the FEE tap weights are applied, and it is determined whether the FEE tap weights cause a decision-directed tracking of channel rotations to satisfy a stability metric. In response to the stability metric not being satisfied, the assumed…

Low-height coupled inductors

Granted: March 28, 2023
Patent Number: 11615915
A coupled inductor includes a ladder magnetic core including (a) a first rail and a second rail separated from each other in a first direction and (b) a plurality of rungs separated from each other in a second direction. The second direction is orthogonal to the first direction, and each rung of the plurality of rungs is disposed between the first rail and the second rail in the first direction. The coupled inductor further includes a plurality of windings, where each winding of the…

Systems and methods for energy-efficient data processing

Granted: March 21, 2023
Patent Number: 11610095
An energy-efficient sequencer comprising inline multipliers and adders causes a read source that contains matching values to output an enable signal to enable a data item prior to using a multiplier to multiply the data item with a weight to obtain a product for use in a matrix-multiplication in hardware. A second enable signal causes the output to be written to the data item.

Systems and methods for logging data in harsh environments

Granted: March 7, 2023
Patent Number: 11598674
Systems and methods of the present invention allow to determine ambient gas temperature in harsh environments such as in a steam autoclave chamber during a sterilization process. In certain embodiments of the invention, temperature data is gathered using a sensor that is placed in an enclosed electronics-based temperature logging device. A capsule seals the temperature logging device except for a through hole that, during regular operation, allows gas to directly contact a surface of the…

MIPI translation in GMSL tunnel mode

Granted: February 28, 2023
Patent Number: 11595504
Systems and methods provide secure, end-to-end high-speed data encoding and communication. In certain embodiments, this is accomplished by modifying a header portion of a data packet received from a first device and complying with a one Mobile Industry Processor Interface (MIPI) protocol to create a modified data packet that complies with a faster MIPI protocol. The header portion of the modified data packet is validated during a tunnel mode operation using an error detection process to…

Current-controlled, single-inductor, multiple-output, DC-DC converter with continuous conduction and discontinuous conduction modes

Granted: February 7, 2023
Patent Number: 11575320
A controller for a SIMO DC-DC converter operable in CCM and DCM receives a signal representative of an inductor current, and signals representative of a first and a second DC-DC converter output. The controller has a first and second output adapted to control electronic switches coupled to a first and second output filter, and a third and fourth output adapted to control current in an inductor. The controller controls the outputs based upon the inputs by determining a desired PWL…

Multi-transistor device including first and second LDMOS transistors having respective drift regions separated in a thickness direction by a shared RESURF layer

Granted: January 17, 2023
Patent Number: 11557588
A multi-transistor device includes first and second lateral double-diffused metal-oxide-semiconductor field effect (LDMOS) transistors sharing a first p-type reduced surface field (RESURF) layer and a first drain n+ region. In certain embodiments, the first LDMOS transistor includes a first drift region, the second LDMOS transistor includes a second drift region, and the first and second drift regions are at least partially separated by the first p-type RESURF layer in a thickness…

Electrical switching systems including constant-power controllers and associated methods

Granted: January 10, 2023
Patent Number: 11552628
An electrical switching system includes a constant-power controller and a switching device electrically coupled between a first node and a second node. The constant-power controller is configured to (a) generate a digital control signal to control the switching device, (b) control a duration of an active phase of the digital control signal at least partially based on a voltage across the switching device, and (c) control a peak value of the digital control signal to regulate a peak…

Switching circuits having multiple operating modes and associated methods

Granted: December 20, 2022
Patent Number: 11532985
A method for controlling a switching circuit including an input port electrically coupled to a photovoltaic device and an output port electrically coupled to a load includes (1) entering a voltage limiting operating mode and (2) in the voltage limiting operating mode (i) causing a control switching device of the switching circuit to repeatedly switch between its conductive and non-conductive states in a manner which limits magnitude of an output voltage to a maximum voltage value, the…

CNN-based demodulating and decoding systems and methods for universal receiver

Granted: November 29, 2022
Patent Number: 11514322
Presented are systems and methods for automatically creating and labeling training data for training-based radio, comprising receiving, at a receiver, a frame that comprises a modulated radio frequency (RF) signal comprising a set of waveforms that correspond to payload data. The payload data comprises a sequence of random bits. In embodiments, until a stopping condition is met one or more steps are performed, comprising detecting the frame; demodulating the modulated RF signal to…

Amplifier switching control systems and methods

Granted: November 8, 2022
Patent Number: 11496096
A first module is configured to, based on an input sample, determine a first duty cycle. A second module is configured to, based on a battery voltage and the first duty cycle, determine a second duty cycle. A third module is configured to: set a scalar value based on at least one of a battery current, an amplitude of the input sample, the second duty cycle, and an output voltage; and generate a start signal at a rate equal to a predetermined rate multiplied by the scalar value. A fourth…

Systems and methods for energy-efficient analog matrix multiplication for machine learning processes

Granted: November 8, 2022
Patent Number: 11494625
A novel energy-efficient multiplication circuit using analog multipliers and adders reduces the distance data has to move and the number of times the data has to be moved when performing matrix multiplications in the analog domain. The multiplication circuit is tailored to bitwise multiply the innermost product of a rearranged matrix formula to output the generate a matrix multiplication result in form of a current that is then digitized for further processing.

Acoustic augmentation of haptic vibration with correlated sounds

Granted: October 4, 2022
Patent Number: 11460923
Described herein are system and method embodiments of acoustic augmentation of haptic vibration with correlated sounds. Embodiments of a haptic driven signal crossing both vibration band and acoustic band are disclosed. The driven signal at the acoustic band enables a haptic in an electronic device to provide an audio augmentation for haptic vibration independent from a loudspeaker of the electronic device. Upon a touch on a touch surface is detected, a vibration request is generated…

Low-power complex analog LMS adaptation systems and methods

Granted: September 27, 2022
Patent Number: 11456898
LMS adaption systems and methods disclosed herein adaptively switch between modes of operation that selectively avoid using the imaginary part of an error signal, in effect, allowing for an LMS adaption that switches between utilizing only the real part of the error signal and utilizing the full complex error signal. Various embodiments take advantage of this added flexibility by implementing a dynamic power saving scheme that, for example, during times when high tracking performance…

Power control systems and methods for machine learning computing resources

Granted: September 20, 2022
Patent Number: 11449126
Described are context-aware low-power systems and methods that reduce power consumption in compute circuits such as commonly available machine learning hardware accelerators that carry out a large number of arithmetic operations when performing convolution operations and related computations. Various embodiments exploit the fact that power demand for a series of computation steps and many other functions a hardware accelerator performs is highly deterministic, thus, allowing for energy…